Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
wendy house

wendy house

6.1
A small toy house that children play in
  • noun
  • UK
translation icon : casita de juegos
  • The children spent all afternoon playing make-believe in their wendy house in the garden.

Examples

  • We bought a pink wendy house for our daughter's birthday last year.

  • Toys and books were scattered across the floor of the wendy house.

  • The children love playing in the wendy house.

  • Have you seen the new wendy house in the garden?

  • The children spent all afternoon playing make-believe in their wendy house in the garden.

  • We bought a pink wendy house for our daughter's birthday last year.

  • Toys and books were scattered across the floor of the wendy house.

Synonyms

playhouse
vswendy house
31 2.3

A small house for children to play in

is the specific name used instead of a general label for the item

How Big

tent
514 1.0
wendy house
  • UK
6.1

Surface Forms

wendy house singular
wendy houses plural

Morphology

wendy + house

The first element 'Wendy' is a proper name with no inherent meaning of 'small' or 'play', so a learner who knows 'Wendy' and 'house' would most likely interpret this as 'Wendy's house' or a house named Wendy rather than a child's playhouse. The compound is a culturally specific lexical item in British English (named usage) whose specific sense cannot be derived compositionally from its parts, making it unpredictable to B1 learners.

Etymology

Wendy house may come from the girl Wendy in the story Peter Pan, because people began calling small toy houses after that well-known little girl. So today Wendy house means 'a small playhouse for children'.